Cape Town – at last!     Sunday, 18/05/2025

We sailed into the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront Marina just on 13:00 yesterday. It was a great relief to get here – it was not the easiest trip, mainly because the wind was very light much of the time. In addition, it is a very busy section of the coast, innumerable ships making the transit around the Cape of Good Hope. Very few actually enter the port of Cape Town – most are headed to Europe and the United States, the occasional one to Brazil or Argentina. Going the other way, most seemed to be bound for Singapore, Malaysia or China.

It’s ironic that conditions were so calm. Before being renamed to make it sound more optimistic, the Cape was called the Cape of Storms (named by Bartolomeu Dias, who first rounded it in 1497, and called it Cabo das Tormentas in Portuguese). Over the last few centuries, hundreds of ships have been lost on the South African coast – not just around the Cape, but right up past Durban. Storms tend to come roughly every 4 to 7 days – I had mine in the middle, hence seeking shelter at Port St Francis – but outside of that conditions have been very calm. Having rounded Cape Point during the night, there was almost no wind as I sailed up the west coast to Cape Town yesterday. Indeed, the ocean was like a lake (as the photos below testify). If I hadn’t switched on the engine, we would have been lucky to arrive 24 hours later. The wind has picked up today, but it’s still only 6 knots.

The approach by water to Cape Town is spectacular, culminating in the dramatic view of Table Mountain as you head for the harbour. I’d intended to berth at the Royal Cape Yacht Club but they were allegedly full, so I got a place at the V&A Waterfront Marina instead. Probably a good thing, because the RCYC is apparently dirty, and is over a mile from the centre, with an unpleasant walk through dockland. The V&A Waterfront area is part of the heart of the city – dozens of restaurants, hundreds of shops, and completely safe (even at night). The marina itself is pristine – a real pleasure after the traumatic filth of Durban. There are luxury apartments around it – looking in an estate agent’s window I noted that the larger ones sell for R50 million (£2m or over $2.5m) – an absolute fortune in South Africa, where property is cheap by international standards. (It’s often said that the Western Cape is unlike the rest of South Africa, feeling as though it’s offshore). 

The relatively short four-day voyage was made more difficult by heavy sea mist at times. This was most noticeable last Thursday – after sunrise there was thick mist. I thought, Oh, it will lift by 9 or 10am. But it remained, with visibility down to not much more than a hundred metres. But it didn’t – until suddenly at 2pm it disappeared – only to return at 4pm. This was as I was approaching Cape Agulhas, the most southerly point of Africa, and I put it down to the fact that two ocean currents merge here – the warm Agulhas current that comes down the coast and the cold Benguela current that comes up from the south and then flows up the west coast. But after a clear day on Friday, we got more mist on Friday night as we crossed south of False Bay. Perhaps it’s just the time of year. At times like this, having AIS is a godsend: in effect you can navigate by instruments, seeing any ship crossing your path. It’s quite extraordinary when a 300 metre long (and probably 10 storey high) ship passes only a thousand metres away from you and you cannot see it at all. The route I took sought to minimise contact with ships – from Cape St Francis I sailed southwest, crossing the main shipping lane, which runs westerly at that point, roughly 12 to 24 nautical miles off the coast. But after rounding Cape Agulhas, I headed back across the shipping lane to hug the coast around Cape Point and beyond. At times we were surrounded by numerous ships, as the photo below shows. (You can see the scale in the bottom centre and Manuka in the middle, at the end of the pink route line I’d taken. And as you can see, SOG – speed over ground – at the time was only 2.5 knots, whereas most ships are travelling at 13-15 knots).

Anyway, it’s great to be here. At least it’s progress.